title: Information seeking behaviors of parents whose children have life-threatening illnesses.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  For children with life-threatening illnesses we sought to (1) understand the associations between parental characteristics and preferred health information sources, and (2) assess the e-health literacy of Internet-users.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional, telephone survey of 129 parents whose children are in a pediatric palliative care program in Florida.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Four out of five parents report that they use the Internet, and 64% of Internet-users use it daily. Parents who never use the Internet, versus parents who do use the Internet, are predominately Hispanic (50%) and have less than a high school education (64%) (P ≤ 0.023). Internet-users have high levels of e-health literacy; however, they are not confident or are unsure about the quality of information on the Internet. Not having graduated from high school was associated with a decrease in e-health literacy and using the Internet as the primary information source (vs. doctor as primary source) was associated with an increase in e-health literacy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Parents of children with life-threatening illnesses have access to and use the Internet as a source of information about their children's health. More information is needed to explore how electronic-based interventions could be used to impact information seeking of parents whose children are in pediatric palliative care programs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Policy Research, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. cak@ichp.ufl.edu
authors.forename: Caprice
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Knapp
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Madden
authors.forename: Mircea
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marcu
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Curtis
authors.forename: Phyllis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sloyer
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Shenkman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016638:Critical Illness / Q000523:psychology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D010166:Palliative Care; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011379:Prognosis; D055815:Young Adult